Ivarsson, Linnea

How to Construct the Perfect Scandal : a study of the news reported by Expressen concerning the SD-scandal (English)

Abstract [en]

Title: How to Construct the Perfect Scandal – a study of the news reported by Expressen concerning the SD-scandal

Author: Linnea Ivarsson

This C-paper presents the incident concerning the political party Sverigedemokraterna in Expressen in November 2012. The newspaper was the main source of the news reporting with the mobile phone camera film from the occurance and led the way of the news reporting in Sweden about three party members.

The paper investigates how the story telling of the so called SD-scandal was constructed, using Critical Discourse Analysis as the analysis method combined with selected parts from the analysis method of critical linguistics. The theories that have been used to establish the results of the analysis are Critical Discourse as a theory based on Norman Fairclough and Teun A. van Dijks theoretical keystones combined with Sigurd Allerns and Ester Pollacks theories and schematic point of view on the constructions of political scandals in media.

With the theories and analysis methods above mentioned the results turned out to confirm the theory about how political scandals in media are constructed and designed with certain strategies and agenda. The authors of the articles in Expressen showed the reader that they throughout the process had a certain plan with the material the editors of the newspaper had before the scandal burst. The way they used quotes from the witnesses, the leader Jimmie Åkesson and from the political members combined with how they edited the mobile phone film and published it in a strategic way analyzed with the discourse analysis as a starting point showed that the newspaper constructed the roles and the discourse that were intermediated. Coincidences did not exist in this news reporting and the process from the first interview with the witness until the last article when some of the men were resigned seemed to have been strategically planned out even before the first article was published.

In the conclusion of the paper it shows that Expressen seemed to have a well planned strategy in their news reporting of the three politicians in the film and the occurrences. Political scandals in media have looked the same for quite some time and by the result of this analysis it will still have the same construction since the outcome of this story was effective and profiting for the newspaper. At the same time, the discourse of hypocritical and lying politicians is effectively reproduced through how the reporting was constructed and angled. Even though racism might have seemed to be the main theme of the articles, the purpose seemed to have been to put the politicians in a precarious and almost unfixable situation, a process we have seen many times before in media.